UDACITY HISTORY
Udacity is the outgrowth of free computer science classes
offered in 2011 through Stanford University (Wikipedia, 2017). In a Stanford
University experiment, Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig offered their
"Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" course online to anyone interested,
at no charge and over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled. Not much later, Udacity was born.
With headquarters in Mountain View, California, Udacity is
a for-profit educational organization, founded by Sebastian Thrun – with David
Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky. The program offers massive open online courses (MOOCs). Udacity has partnered with companies such as: AT&T, Cloudera,
Salesforce, Autodesk, Google, Hack
Reactor (a popular and prestigious coding bootcamp), Facebook, and MongoDB. Udacity
won’t disclose their earnings. However, Rao (2016), reported that one source previously pegged the
company’s annual revenue to be around $24 million, and that Udacity has
recently become one of technology's newest unicorns—meaning they recently
achieved a value of $1 billion.
MISSION
The Udacity mission is to bring accessible, affordable,
engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world. They believe that
higher education is a basic human right, and they seek to empower their
students to advance their education and careers. The program accomplishes their mission by teaching students skills that
industry employers are looking for, at a fraction of the cost of traditional schools.
LEADERSHIP
Sebastian Thrun, (the Stanford professor and Google
roboticist) who founded Udacity has been referred to as “the Godfather of free online
education.” In November 2012, he won the
Smithsonian American Ingenuity in Education Award for his work with
Udacity. His work has a romantic,
populist flair and has also been referred to as “arguably the most famous
scientist in the world.” He designed and
built robots around human problems, and gave them accessible names. Rhino, part
of his thesis project at the University of Bonn, provided guided tours at the local
museum. During a stint at Carnegie Mellon University, Thrun developed Pearl, a Jetsons-like
“nursebot” with a human-looking face, to assist in elder-care facilities. His
greatest achievement was Stanley, the autonomous car that won Stanford
a $2 million Defense Department prize and won Thrun the notice of Google
cofounder Larry Page.
Udacity's founder Sebastian Thrun stepped down as chief
executive officer in April 2016. This made way for Vishal Makhijani, the company's
chief operating officer and a Yahoo executive, to become Udacity's new CEO
(Rao, 2016). Thrun remains as President
and Chairman of Udacity and continues to work full-time at Udacity, focusing on
innovation.
A CHANGE IN
APPROACH TO MASS EDUCATION
Thrun initially founded Udacity in 2012 by putting free
college courses online to make learning more accessible. However, the college
partnerships failed, and the company detoured into offering courses, partnering
with Facebook and Google, as well as certifications for workers who want to
beef up their technical skills or learn new ones.
“Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, Godfather of free online
education, changes course” Max Chafkin
(2013). This article describes Thrun’s
change in approach towards mass education as a result of the continually failing rates of MOOCs students. Thrun announced
that Udacity, which originally focused on offering university-style courses,
had a "lousy product" and that the service was pivoting to focus more
on vocational courses for professionals and "nanodegrees."
UDACITY’S NANODEGREE
PROGRAM
In 2014, Udacity introduced “Nanodegree,” a paid
intensive certification course training people for technical jobs such as
software development. Udacity has expanded this program from the U.S. to India and
China. The "Nanodegree"
program was designed to teach programming skills needed to qualify for an
entry-level IT position at AT&T. A
Nanodegree, provided by Udacity and AT&T among other partners, is an online
certification that you can earn in 6-12 months (10-20 hours/week) for
$200/month (Rauch, 2014; Morell, 2015).
Nanodegrees seem to be targeted towards new generations of
young programmers who are about to step into college or feel disenfranchised
with their college/post-college experience and disappointed with its ROI
(return on investment). Furthermore, Udacity also wants students who are already working to earn certificates so they will be happier in their careers.
Since Nanodegrees are produced in collaboration with tech
companies, students are expected to be up to date on terms of technologies
used. In 2014 several hundred computer
science students around the world began taking classes for an online master’s
degree program being jointly offered by Udacity and the Georgia Institute of
Technology. Georgia Tech professors taught the courses and handled admissions
and accreditation, and students received a Georgia Tech diploma. Udacity
hosted the course material, while expenses were covered by AT&T.
COURSE FORMAT
Each course consists of video
lectures with closed captioning, integrated quizzes (to help
students understand concepts and reinforce ideas), as well as follow-up homework
which promote a "learn by doing" model. Programming classes use the
Python language; programming assignments are graded using an automated grading
programs on the Udacity servers.
ENROLLMENT
Udacity has 1.6 million users. Founded in June 2011, by the summer of 2012, Udacity had students in 203 countries - with the greatest number
in the United States (42 percent), India (7 percent), Britain (5 percent), and
Germany (4 percent). Udacity students range from 13-year-olds to 80-year-olds. Advanced 13-year-olds are
able to complete multiple, higher-level computer science courses.
PROGRAMS AND COURSES
Artificial Intelligence
|
Building Websites
|
Data Science
|
Develop for Mobile
|
Machine Learning
|
Develop for Virtual Reality
|
Self-driving Car Technology
|
Predictive Analytics
|
Programming Basics
|
Others
|
Courses (173)
Programming (100)
|
Art & Design (6)
|
Computer Science (43)
|
Science (2)
|
Mathematics (10)
|
Social Science (1)
|
Business & Management (10)
|
Education & Teaching (1)
|
RELATIVE COSTS
In 2014, the Georgia Institute of Technology launched the
first "massive online open degree" program (MOOD) in computer science by partnering with Udacity
and AT&T - providing a master's degree upon completion.
Fees were substantial–$6,600 for the equivalent of a three-semester
course of study–but still less than one-third of what an in-state student would
pay at Georgia Tech, and one-seventh of the tuition charged to an out-of-state
student.
HOW TO ACCESS
UDACITY COURSES FOR FREE
Udacity students and graduates have shared their views
and experiences on Quora (2017). Quora program allows the student to speak of various topics including “how to access
Udacity courses for free:” Students have
to pay to take part in a Nanodegree, however, anyone can do all the supporting courses at no charge. A Nanodegree requires the completion of a
number of projects (e.g., eight projects for the Android Nanodegree), and for
each project, students have to do a number of “Supporting Courses”.All of these courses can be accessed and studied for free. Thus the material (video lessons and quizzes)
for the courses associated with Nanodegree programs are always free. To find out more,
go to a given Nanodegree curriculum page (for instance Front-End Web
Developer Nanodegree), scroll down to the "Nanodegree
structure" section, click on the courses listed by "Prepare for this
project with" and access the free course material from there.
Udacity
courses are free, regardless of whether they are part of the Nanodegree
curriculum or not! The courses are open to anyone and begin studies at
any time. The challenge is
students need instruction (which is not straightforward) to access
these materials for free. First of all, you will need an account. Sign up is very simple by entering an email address and setting a password you have created your account. The next step is to go through the Nanodegrees and check
out their curriculum/syllabus. The Nanodegrees are simply a combination of smaller courses. You can search for them individually in the catalog of courses.
You
can’t access the Nanodegree program as is, but you can access the smaller
courses for free here: All
Courses and Nanodegree Programs | Udacity . So, by completing the
smaller courses in a way, you would have completed the Nanodegree. You may
then take an overview of the that Nanodegree program from Udacity’sGitHub
and complete the projects on your own. You may also compare your project to
those of students who have completed that Nanodegree because their projects are available on GitHub.
RECOMMENDATION
& CONCLUSION
You may audit one or more Udacity course(s) for free and
then do a nanodegree if you are happy with your Udacity experience. If cost is an issue, just continue auditing
courses for free while expanding your technical capability thereby making
yourself eligible for higher-level training or a better jobs.
To explore what Udacity has to offer, please click here. Check out the “REFERENCES” below to explore
the articles referred to in this posting.
REFERENCES
Chafkin, Max. 2017. Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, Godfather
Of Free Online Education, Changes Course. Available online at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
Morell, Chris. 2015. NANODEGREE PROGRAMS - Udacity
Nanodegree Reviews: Your Questions Answered. Available online at: http://blog.udacity.com/2015/03/udacity-nanodegree-reviews-your-questions-answered.html
. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
Quora, 2017. How can I access Udacity’s nanodegree
courses for free. Available online at: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-access-Udacitys-nano-degree-courses-for-free
. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
Rao, Leena. 2016. Sebastian Thrun Steps Down As Udacity’s
CEO. Available online at: http://fortune.com/2016/04/22/sebastian-thrun-udacity/ .
Retrieved March 1, 2017.
Rauch, Joseph. 2014. FAQ: What is a Udacity Nanodegree?
Hype or Hope?
http://www.skilledup.com/articles/faq-udacity-nanodegree-hype-hope
. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
Wikipedia, 2017. Udacity.
Available online at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udacity#cite_note-npr-3
. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
Posted by Dr. Nat Tuivavalagi
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